Coach: The Pat Burns Story (24 page)

Bob McGill, who’d been a member of the 1985–86 Leaf team that had established a club record for futility with only seventeen wins, could scarely believe the squad’s good fortunes and gave all the credit to Burns. “In years past, we had different coaches and a different philosophy every year. There was always turmoil. Guys weren’t happy and we weren’t a team.”

This was a team, cohesive. The unbeaten streak came to a screeching halt in Detroit on March 5, however, when the Red Wings made the Leafs look lousy, 5–1. This was worrisome because it seemed increasingly likely Toronto would face Detroit in the first round of the playoffs. But they wasted no time getting back on track, soon afterward dumping the Tampa Bay Lightning 8–2. “I think we’ve woken a lot of people up,” said Burns. “Deep down, some of them might be saying, ‘Ah, they’re a bunch of phonies riding a big streak. But I think other teams are starting to notice. If you’re going to build on that, you have to keep working hard. You can’t get to a certain point and then relax.” At practice before that Bolts game, Burns unleashed some rage, shattering his stick against the glass. “I’m just doing my job. I have to make them realize that you can’t go through the motions at this time of the year. If you want to keep the fire burning, you have to outrun the wind.” He’d been working on that quote for a while, as was his habit to keep reporters satisfied.

With eleven games remaining, Toronto was flirting with first place in the Norris Division—penthouse territory, though no one was allowed to even mention that in the dressing room. The Leafs locked up a playoff spot on March 28 by trouncing the equally hot Flames 4–0. Predictably, Burns saw the glass as half-empty. “We haven’t done diddly yet. We haven’t won anything yet. We haven’t won our division, we haven’t won a playoff round. There’s nothing to get excited about. We can’t fly our flags and say, ‘We’ve made it, we’re done.’ ”

Yet the players had clearly fallen in thrall to Burns’s unfancy approach to success. They were 25–8–3 since January 6—no other team in the NHL
had been better over that stretch—and had just garnered seven out of a possible eight points on their last road trip. In Toronto, many Leaf fans, after weathering misery for so many years, had to pinch themselves and ask, “Are we all hallucinating?” On April 4, the Leafs won their forty-second game, surpassing the franchise record, set in 1950–51 and matched in 1977–78.

But then there was a slight wobble, a few setbacks that put first place in the division all but out of reach. McGill’s season was ended by a broken jaw. Andreychuk hadn’t scored in five games. A 4–0 defeat by sad-sack Philadelphia, which snapped the Leafs’ twelve-game undefeated record at home, took some of the glow off. That loss guaranteed Toronto a third-place finish in the Norris Division, behind Chicago and Detroit, where first place had been a possibility just a week earlier. Burns waved off suggestions the season of enchantment had spent itself. “Everyone seems to be looking at us thinking we’re going to choke and fold. Good. Let them think that.”

The final three games were mostly meaningless, though two goals from Foligno in a 4–2 victory over Hartford set a Toronto franchise record for most points in a season. Beating the Blues 2–1 in OT, earning their twenty-fifth home ice victory, established another club record. Their last game was a 3–2 loss to Chicago. The Leafs finished the season with 99 points; the year before, they’d had 67. Everybody was just anxious and eager to start the postseason. “It’s going to be fun,” promised Gilmour. “We’ve got to be happy with the season we’ve had, but not satisfied. We’ve got a little bit of work ahead of us still.”

In an interview with the
Toronto Star
’s Damien Cox, Burns acknowledged that he was dreaming of a Stanley Cup. “There’s no better feeling than looking up on that out-of-town scoreboard and realizing you are one of only two teams still playing. I think about it every day. There could be a chance this year.”

While Fletcher was originally cool to the idea, Burns convinced the GM the team should go north to Collingwood for several days of rest, practice and seclusion before the playoffs. When Gilmour’s grandfather
died, he wanted to return home for the funeral. “I asked Pat, ‘Can I go?’ He said no. He said, ‘Your grandfather would want you here.’ ”

On the day before they flew to Detroit to open the playoffs, Gilmour was strolling to the Collingwood rink with Wendel Clark. “There was this guy in an old Camaro. He’s honking and waving at us.” Gilmour smacks his hands together. “Bang! He drives right into a pole. The guy had a kid in the car with him, so Wendel and I run over to make sure they’re not hurt. And this guy, he’s saying, ‘It’s okay, we’re okay, don’t worry.’ Oh man, it was the wildest thing. We couldn’t believe it.”

And it was just the beginning. Over the next forty-two nights—during which the Maple Leafs would play twenty-one games—all disbelief was suspended.

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used an old bucket of a chartered Air Ontario plane that felt like it was held together by spit and chicken wire. “You’d be sitting there on takeoff, clutching the armrests, never knowing if the damn thing would get up enough speed to lift off the runway,” says Doug Gilmour, shuddering at the memory. Only later on, at the start of the conference final against Los Angeles, did owner Steve Stavro upgrade the team’s transportation arrangements, renting a sleek and spacious 727 with polished attendants serving catered gourmet box lunches. One reporter from each major news outlet was permitted to hitch a lift with the club.

The spring ’93 playoffs were a heart-stopping thrill ride: twenty-one games in forty-two nights for Toronto—three consecutive seven-game series. No other NHL team had done that before, and Pat Burns burnished his reputation as coaching virtuoso. It would be a dreadful metaphor to say the postseason flight eventually crashed and burned for the Leafs, and all those along for the breathtaking spring whirl. But everyone who was there, up close, will never forget the experience—the hockey, the whole splendiferous and exhilarating adventure.

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you.” That was Gilmour toying with a reporter who’d inquired about the Leafs’ strategy against Detroit, Toronto’s first-round opponent. Pat Burns had been equally cagey about what he had in mind as the series opened. Toronto had allowed only 241 goals in 84 games for a 2.87 GAA, the best since 1971–72. Cliff Fletcher had constructed a compelling club out of the wreckage left behind from the ’80s. But this was also the oldest team in the NHL, with an average age of twenty-eight. And now Toronto was going up against the offensively flashy Red Wings and their formidable power play. Hustle and desire had been contagious among the Leafs, but would that be enough to cramp the superior talent and prowess of Steve Yzerman, Chris Chelios and their Motor City crew? “The crack in the door is there for every team,” reminded Burns, noting Toronto and Detroit had split their head-to-head series through the regular season. “I know I believe that, but I don’t know if all the players believe it.” Then, mimicking the traditional Olympics declaration: “Let the games begin!”

Stavro had Maple Leaf Gardens director Terry Kelly hand-deliver a lucky tie to Burns on the eve of the series. He chose not to wear it for game one at the Joe Louis Arena. It might have helped, as things turned out. If the coach did have a game plan, it must have gone unheeded. Leafs turned the puck over in their own end, took bad penalties, failed to contain the Red Wings’ speed, missed passes, blew checking assignments, couldn’t even execute a viable dump-and-chase and got pushed around absurdly. The Leafs looked not only nervous but afraid. At one point, trash-talking thorn-in-the-side Dino Ciccarelli—he’d staked out territory directly in front of Félix Potvin, practically planted a flag, and was left unmolested—screeched insults right in the young goalie’s face, and nobody made a move to dislodge him. “If a guy’s going to put his rear end in our goaltender’s face, we’ve got to do something about it,” Burns complained.

Before the game, Todd Gill paced anxiously in his underwear outside the Leaf dressing room. The teamwide tension could be cut with a knife. The Leafs took the boisterous crowd at the Joe out of the equation by scoring first after killing off a two-man disadvantage, but they were frantic,
undisciplined and overwhelmed thereafter, thrashed 6–3. Octopi plopped on the ice in whoop-whoop celebration. Burns had to salvage something from the atrocity to alleviate his players’ despondency. “It was one of those nights. What you don’t want to do is bury your head. You’ve got to stick it up proud and get right back at it.” An invitation to the dance is how Burns had characterized Toronto’s first playoff inclusion after more than a thousand days and nights in the wilderness. But the Leafs had been stomped, staggering in their incompetence. The coach was among those who marvelled at Detroit’s awesomeness. “You should have seen it from ice level. Whoosh—and they were gone. That team can kill your dreams in ten minutes.”

Ten minutes, five shots, four goals: goodbye dreams.

Bad-ass Bob Probert, the NHL’s heavyweight champ, mocked Wendel Clark, practically slapped a white glove across the captain’s face. “You really couldn’t find him out there on the ice,” he sneered. Probert had almost ripped off Potvin’s arm in one drive-by collision and then mugged passive defenceman Dmitri Mironov with nary a shove-back. “Probert was pretty much allowed to do what he wanted,” Burns groused. “But I don’t have a forklift to move him out of there.”

There was more bad news: Toronto right winger Nikolai Borschevsky collided with Vladimir Konstantinov in the third period, striking his head on the lip of the boards. He fractured the orbital bone below his right eye. When Borschevsky tried to blow his nose, his eye puffed up grotesquely because air was forced through the crack in the bone. The injury was expected to keep the not-so-husky Siberian out of the lineup for at least seven days, doctors saying he wouldn’t be able to play with a face shield once the swelling went down because air could leak into the eye and explode the orb. Meanwhile, Todd Gill suffered back spasms after lunging for a puck. The eviscerated lineup had Burns wringing his hands over what might ensue in game two. “Often, you get the smell of blood when you lose players. The other team gets going like wolves.” As personnel adjustment, Burns dressed Mike Foligno, who’d been a game one scratch. “Maybe Foligno might have a couple bounce in off his bum.”

Next morning, propped on a stool and balancing on the tip of his skates as he faced reporters, Burns tried to sound philosophical. “When I got up this morning, the sun was still shining,” he said, evoking Pierre Elliott Trudeau after the Night of the Long Thousand Knives. That evening, a bunch of Leafs went to Tiger Stadium to take in the ballgame against Seattle. Handing out ducats, PR director Bob Stellick added, “You also get a coupon for a free hot dog and drink.”

Toronto put in a better effort in game two, showed more zip, but the result was the same: a 6–2 loss. As the score mounted, things got ugly with lots of slashing, spearing and stick swinging. Potvin grew so exasperated with Ciccarelli’s abuse that he laid a two-hander across his irritant’s shins with his goal stick. The Joe crowd, meanwhile, taunted the oddly docile Clark: “WENDY! WENDY!” In the regular season, Clark had outpunched Probert in a memorable title fight, but now he turned the other cheek. Probert was a menacing presence every time he stepped on the ice, while Toronto’s lauded team grit had turned to team silt. Clark had sought calmer waters at the edge of repeated frays, noticeable only for his absence—the absence of malice. He was excoriated by reporters for his meekness. “Pat had told me not to fight Probert,” Clark says now. “But I wasn’t allowed to say that I’d been told not to fight him.”

Perhaps there had been a breakdown in communication between coach and captain. “I told Wendel and the others that they had to create some havoc to get this thing turned around,” said Burns. “Nobody’s asking him to fight Bob Probert—that’s not it at all. Probert’s not the problem. We’ve got to hit their good people and not waste our time and energy on guys who can’t really hurt us.” Burns was livid over Probert questioning Clark’s manhood and stories written about Toronto’s captain. “You can question Wendel’s ability to score. You can question his ability to shoot. But nobody will ever question Wendel’s toughness or his heart. That’s bullshit, pardon the expression. Wendel Clark is not a guy that’s going to skate away from anything. Nobody here will ever question Wendel Clark’s courage.” Steaming, the coach stalked off. Yet later, privately, Burns took aside a
columnist who’d been especially merciless in print about “Pretty Boy” Clark. “You’re not entirely wrong,” he confided.

Detroit coach Bryan Murray claimed to be appalled by all the lumberwork. “It was certainly one of the most vicious games I’ve been involved in. There are lots of people who don’t want fighting but, if that’s the result of no fighting in hockey … boy.” For Burns, the only saving grace was leaving Motown behind for a while, with few chroniclers of the Leafs misfortunes—outscored 12–5—expecting the team to return there that spring. “We’re a good club,” Burns said defiantly. “At least we’re going back home. Let’s wait and see. I hope our fans are as vocal as theirs.” He repeated the Leaf gospel preached all season: “Everything this team has accomplished has come from hard work and second effort. It seems to me, we coaches showed them all these films and diagrams and explained matchups at length, and at some point, they said to themselves, ‘Hey, this is going to be easy, as long as we follow those plans.’ Well, it’s never easy. Never has been. Never will be.”